


the reflective refractive blues

by shinealightonme



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Doppelganger, Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Gen, Mirror Universe, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:24:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Mirror universe isn't done with Wendy yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the reflective refractive blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LJC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LJC/gifts).



**The hallway outside Wendy's illegal sublet. The middle of the day and well past bedtime.**

"Yo, Wendy Watson," Noser called out to her as Wendy stepped out of the elevator and off of the longest Middleday she could remember.

"Hey, Noser," she yawned, surprised at how much of it was intelligible, which was to say, any of it.

"You look like you've been fighting the good fight."

"I've been fighting something," Wendy said. "And now I want to fight the Sandman into submission."

"Wouldn't that mean you wouldn't fall asleep?" Noser asked, as Wendy tried to remember which key opened her door.

"Maybe. I'll get back to you when my brain is working at something above the processing power of a first generation Gameboy." Keys not working, Wendy rested her head on the door and found that it was open already. Scrambling to recover her balance woke her again, for a minute at least.

"You seen Lacey at all today?" Noser asked.

"Can't say I have," Wendy answered. "Has she been out?"

"She's been here all right," Noser said. "But there's something a little strange going on with that girl."

"She probably just accidentally ingested dairy again," Wendy waved the problem off. "I'll look into it as soon as I can keep my eyes open long enough to look at things."

"All right," Noser said, and played a G-minor chord.

"I guess that wasn't the answer he wanted," Wendy said as she pulled the door shut behind her. God, why did she live in a loft? The last thing she wanted to do after wrestling with the Antmen of the Gamma Quadrant was to climb up stairs.

Then she remembered she had a couch.

"Oh, sweet couch, you're the only one who understands me," she mumbled, and if this was in fact true it was probably because her lips were pressed up into the crease between couch cushions and only the couch could tell that she had been speaking words at all. Lacey certainly didn't seem to have heard her, because she was still trying to talk.

Wasn't there something about Lacey she was supposed to be doing?

"Lace?" Wendy asked, turning her head a little so she could see her young, photogenic roommate, who looked less young and photogenic than usual, for reasons Wendy couldn't put her finger on.

"Did you even hear what I said, Wendy Watson?"

"Of course I did," Wendy yawned, sitting back up and making a superhuman effort to remember the words she had half-slept through, because it seemed important to Lacey. "You said that I need to wake up, grab my Middlegear, and come with you if I ever want to see my Lacey again." _That_ woke her up. "Qué?"

"Yeah, I didn't think I'd have to tell you twice," Lacey said, and Wendy was awake enough now to realize why she'd thought Lacey looked older than usual. She had a tight, unhappy look on her face like someone had just tried to tell her that lobsters couldn't _feel_ pain so she should just have a little bite. At least, she looked unhappy on the parts of her face that Wendy could see. She had a scarf wrapped around her neck, despite the heat in their sadly-liberated-from-anything-resembling-air-conditioning sublet, and it covered up the lower parts of her face. She also had her hair pulled up under her stylishly tilted beret in a way that, stylishly tilted or no, made her look like some kind of militaristic librarian in serious need of unwinding.

And, you know, she was pointing a gun at Wendy, which was pretty atypical behavior itself.

"Did you just say Middlegear?" Wendy asked.

"Gee, Dubdub, I see you've got your priorities in order," Lacey said, jerking the gun toward the door. "I thought for sure you'd say 'my Lacey'? Or just try and take the gun away from me, but I wouldn't recommend that."

"I don't need to gasp in astonishment that you aren't my Lacey," Wendy said. "One, my Lacey would never point a gun at me even if I was sleeping through something important, because can you say 'Holy gun control reform legislation, Batman!', two, Noser gave me a heads up that there was something bizarro about you today, and three, that's a _silk_ scarf you're wearing."

Lacey sighed. "I knew I was forgetting something," she said. "And Noser caught me off guard. He asked 'who's the man in the mirror?' and the only thing I could think of was Chad Kroeger."

"Yikes," Wendy said. "I'm surprised he didn't call the cops on you."

"Yeah, well, you'd be behind on your music trivia too if the only music that ever got played in your universe was Nickelback."

"Nickelback? What, are you from an evil parallel universe or something?" Wendy snorted, but then she did a double take so exaggerated that if she were a cartoon character her eyes would have popped out of her head and turned around at a ninety-degree angle. "Wait, _Lacey_?"

"Well, I'm not Joe 90," she snapped.

"Yeah, but you're the other Lacey – the Lacey from the mirror universe – "

"I know," she said. "Geez, are your ears full of ketracel white or something?"

"Gamma Quadrant ant ooze," Wendy grouched.

"Haven't met them, don't care to," Lacey said. "Right now, I've got bigger problems than your relative lack of hygiene."

"Hey, I have hygiene!" Wendy said, though a quick sniff told her that she was fighting some pretty strong evidence to the contrary. "This is just, you know, special circumstances."

"I've got some special circumstances going on myself," Lacey said. "I don't usually go around kidnapping Middle-trainees who are the identical twins of my _extremely_ former best friend turned world dominating megalomaniac."

"But you're making an exception now?" Wendy arched an eyebrow. She was still sitting on the couch, but her laziness was entirely a front at this point. She could pounce up at any moment and take Lacey down, whatever lofty promises Lacey made about the gun aside. It only seemed fair to warn un-Lacey, who up until this sleepless afternoon hadn't struck her as such a bad person. "I gotta tell you, that's not going to be as easy as you think. I know there's no Sensei Ping who could've trained you."

"Who said anything about fighting you?" Un-Lacey waved the gun around aimlessly. "This was to get your attention and buy me some time. I don't need to fight you, because you're going to come with me of your own free will."

"Do I look like a Michael Bay character to you?" Wendy asked. "I'm not going back to that hell-dimension with you, ever. I've had my fill of fascists with spray-on soup, thanks."

"You are coming with me," Un-Lacey said. "Because Lacey's already there."

-

**Wendy and Lacey's illegal sublet. Moments after the nasty shock.**

"What do you mean, Lacey's already there?" Wendy demanded, voice rising with every word.

"Keep it down," Un-Lacey hissed. "Noser's sitting right outside, and I don't think you're going to want to explain to him who I am if I'm not Lacey."

" _You're_ the one who should be worrying about explanations," Wendy said. She was feeling less and less concerned about giving Un-Lacey a fighting chance.

"Look, Fatboy got their hands on the cannon again and destroyed it," Un-Lacey said, grabbing Wendy by the arm and pulling her upstairs. "Ida found another way to jump between dimensions, but there has to be an equivalent exchange."

"Equivalent exchange? What is this, some anime nerd's fantasy?"

"Don't ask me, I didn't invent the thing. I'm just – I'm not even the Middleman," Un-Lacey said, and stamped her foot on the ground. Wendy winced a little at the tube of acrylic paint that got squished and spurted all over the carpet. Her mother always told her not to leave things lying around. "There's just something about the atoms needing to switch places, or something."

"Right, except, you don't have the same atoms as Lacey," Wendy said, tugging Un-Lacey's beret off and exposing her dyed black, short-cropped hair. "So you might as well have picked anyone to swap places with – " She grabbed the silk scarf and pulled that off, too " – hell, you could have swapped places with a tree – "

Un-Lacey snatched the scarf back, but Wendy had already seen the long, jagged scar running along her jaw.

"This is for your benefit," she snapped, putting the scarf back. "It'd be pretty hard to explain to Noser and the rest of your crowd why Lacey isn't disfigured anymore."

Wendy felt like crap, and very nearly apologized. But then she remembered all over again that this woman had stolen her best friend and put her into the evil mirror universe. So it was a bit of a wash on the guilt front.

"What would really simplify my explanations is if you hadn’t come poking around at all," Wendy pointed out. “So to what do I owe the pleasure?”

"Turns out overthrowing the established order and creating a power vacuum doesn't lead to nice sunny vacations by the beach," Un-Lacey said, and started rummaging through Wendy's drawers, pulling things out at random. "That's why I had to come back for you."

"Look, if there really is a problem, let's tell the Middleman, get – "

"No." Un-Lacey pulled out Wendy's nicest, black, appropriate-for-a-funeral-but-still-kind-of-sexy outfit. "Do you have anything more professional looking?"

"I'm not big on the corporate," Wendy said. "Why can't we get the Boss to help us?"

"He's already caused enough problems," Un-Lacey muttered, darkly. "Here, you'll have to take my jacket – damn, I wish I'd grabbed something from the Alliance before I left – "

"I thought all Laceys were pro Sexy Bossmen," Wendy said. "You seemed to be hitting it off with the new model Middleman when I left."

"Shows what you know," Un-Lacey snorted. "And what I know. People change, Dubdub. Even the ones you think you've got figured out. _That's_ why I had to come back for you, too." She shoved the clothes she'd pulled out into Wendy's arms and threw a pair of boots on top. "Go change. There isn't time for you to wash up, but it's not like my universe is so big on the hot showers and sodium laureth sulfate free soap these days."

"Hang on one Jabberwocky chasing minute, Alice." Wendy dropped the clothes to the ground. "If you go dragging me back through the looking glass, isn't evil me going to show up here and go on a rampage?"

"Your world can handle a rampage a lot better than mine can right about now," Lacey said.

"No," Wendy said. "No, no, no. I put a lot of work into keeping this place clean and tidy and not inverted by cranky aliens who want us to stop playing our damn music out into the galaxy so loud, I'm not letting that soulless little CEO one-percenter me ruin everything. I'm telling the Middleman. He can keep her in line."

"Don't!"

"Why not?"

"Because _he'll_ want to come help and we really don't want my Middleman running around here. You think your twin would cause trouble?" Un-Lacey shook her head. "Besides, we're going to need him."

"Need him for what?"

"Get changed," was all she got. "Then call Ida. She's enough to keep an eye on Wendy Watson."

-

**Split screen sublet/Middleman top secret headquarters. Right in the middle of Ida's online poker tournament.**

"Ida, I've got a weird favor to ask," Wendy whispered into her watch.

"I'm not bailing your ass out of a Mexican jail," Ida cackled.

"I'm not in jail, or in Mexico, and you're not getting anywhere near my ass."

"But you do need bailing out," Ida said. "Or you wouldn't be calling me."

Wendy ground her teeth. Should she explain everything to Ida and risk getting the Middleman involved and pissing off Un-Lacey? But if she didn't, how could she get Ida to listen to her?

"Look, Ida, I'm...having a bad trip," Wendy said. "Really bad." Un-Lacey gave her a thumbs-up at the cover story, so Wendy continued. "I need you to come over and keep me from leaving my apartment or talking to anyone or shooting holes in the walls with inexplicably advanced weapons technology."

"And why would I do that?" Ida asked.

"Because otherwise I might start rattling off stuff about the Middle organization and O2STK and who knows what else...like maybe parallel universes or something..."

"Uh-huh." Ida sat back, unimpressed. "Listen here, sweet cheeks, I know you're not tripping. I can sense drugs in the bloodstream from a mile away. Your pupils aren't even dilated."

"What?" Wendy glared down at her watch. "So why are you always accusing me of being a filthy whacked out hippie?"

"I like to watch the trainees squirm," Ida said. "And now I'll have to find something else to say. You damn kids make things so hard on your elders."

"You're a robot," Wendy snapped.

Ida rolled her eyes. "You damn kids make things so hard on your robots." She leaned forward. "Did that make you feel better, hothead?"

"No," Wendy said.

"Of course, I'm not going to have to make you squirm if you get killed doing some ill-advised off the books Clint Eastwood riding off into the sunset mission by yourself," Ida said. "So maybe you should tell me the real reason you need me to come over and save you from yourself."

Wendy looked at Un-Lacey, who had her mouth hanging open so wide that hordes of !!!!-drinking zombies would have thirsted for her flesh.

"Because there's about to be someone who looks like me but isn't me," Wendy said. "And I can't tell the Boss, well – "

"That block of cheese?" Ida snorted. "Let's leave him out of our girl's night in, all right?"

Wendy shuddered. Ida trying to be her gal pal was ten times worse than Ida gunning for her.

Then Wendy realized that shuddering on camera where Ida could see her was probably a tactical error, and Ida now surely had in her arsenal the new trick she could use to make Wendy squirm.

"I’m worried that the Boss would just make this all more complicated than it needs to be," Wendy said, professional as she could manage.

"Don't you worry, honey, this can be our little secret." Ida winked obscenely. "I'll be over in a jiffy, wouldn't want to miss any of the fun."

Wendy cut off the communication line and turned to Un-Lacey. "You. Owe me _so big._ For this one."

"No comment," Un-Lacey said, but she also looked like she recognized the grumpy look on Wendy's face and was very deeply grateful that it wasn’t her Ida who’d learned any new tricks today.

-

**Wendy and Lacey's loft.**

“Wait a minute,” Wendy said.

**Wendy and Lacey’s loft, one minute later.**

“If Un-Wendy is coming here, what about my Lacey?”

“She’ll land wherever I am,” Un-Lacey said.

“But that means she’s gonna be right here with the same psycho who killed Tyler and turned Manservent Neville into a popsicle!”

“I have to be here with you to take you with me,” Un-Lacey said. “Transdimensional travel doesn’t exactly come with a countdown like you’re trying to take a cheesy family photo.”

“Yeah, but she could - “

“She could do what? Ida’s going to be here too, you know. And if you’re going to try to tell me that Lacey can’t handle you, I will laugh in your face, Wendy Watson, because Laceys are built for all terrains.”

Wendy blew out the long breath of air she’d taken in to protest with and watched as it messed her hair up in front of her eyes. “You’re not going to let me take any easy outs, are you?”

“I haven’t made you darn any jockstraps,” Un-Lacey said, but it sounded more like a joke than a complaint.

“Thank God for small favors,” Wendy muttered.

“We’re going to need all the favors that any gender-neutral hypothetical higher powers might give us,” Un-Lacey said.

A thought occurred. “Such as, for example, that evil Wendy isn’t currently anywhere that would be very very bad for me to suddenly pop in on?”

Un-Lacey actually smiled at that. “You can’t leave _everything_ up to Hir. I’ve got a couple people - good people, that I trust - doing what they can to make sure that we have a window of opportunity to get Wendy Watson _out_ and get _Wendy Watson_ in.”

“And by people you trust I’m guessing you don’t mean the Middleman?” Wendy asked.

“Assuming you want to be out of here the second Ida shows up and before she can invite herself in and knit you matching ‘best friends for life’ doilies - “

“Which I very devoutly do wish,” Wendy inserted.

“ - that’s a longer story than we have time for.”

Wendy sighed. “Fine, fine, keep me in mystery until we return to Oz.”

“And for a little bit longer than that,” Un-Lacey said. “We probably aren’t going to pop up in town anywhere near each other, depending on exactly what my double got up to in my place. My people should bring you somewhere safe.”

“Can we take a precious Ida-free second and idiot-proof that plan?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“All else fails, meet in the geographical center of town. I should be able to find my way there again, and you know your way around town well enough I’m sure it won’t be a problem for you.”

Un-Lacey gnawed her lip. “It’s not perfect,” she said finally. “But it’ll do.”

-

**.eno tsal eht ekil hcum ,dlrow nwodnur a ni edistuO**

The actual process of hopping between worlds wasn't what Wendy remembered. It felt less like being dragged into a drain by a long tentacle and then being flushed down a toilet and more like standing on a slightly too crowded subway car. She wasn't sure which one was less pleasant, but this trip was definitely less dramatic than she remembered.

Until she landed, anyway.

She felt more than heard the explosion, and instinct kicked in, causing her to hit the floor before she was entirely sure there was a floor. She landed on her palms and rolled, immediately, away from the pressure in her ears and the heat on her face.

There were a couple of yells – people who hadn't been so quick to dodge, one of whom had a high pitched scream that was almost musical – and then Wendy's eyes started adjusting to the scene. Although it had been day in her universe, it was dark here. She remembered the smog being bad, but not "block out all sunlight" bad.

And, of course, there was now a bright spark not too far away of a building merrily burning away like a yulelog on public access television.

"Shit," Wendy said, assuming that as she hadn't caused the explosion, it was bad.

"The Union is attacking!" someone shouted by her, and there was an awful lot of running around after that.

"Great Leader," someone said, running up behind her and grabbing her by the elbow. "We have to get you to safety!"

"Get off of me," Wendy snapped, elbowing the unfortunate goon in the gut.

"Apologies, Great Leader," he wheezed. Eyes lingered on them as people ran about their business, carrying an awful lot of weaponry, but no one looked shocked, and no one else approached her. Thank Gender Neutral Hypothetical Higher Power that Evil Wendy had a nasty streak. No one would question anything Wendy did too closely, at least not if she didn't screw up too bad.

"This is a Union assault," Wendy said, talking loud enough to be overheard and thanking whatever helpful passerby had dropped the right lingo. "I will not hide my head in the sand and let them think I'm afraid of them."

"Yes, Great Leader," more than a few people mumbled.

This would be the absolute best time for one of Un-Lacey's friends to swoop down and bustle her away. Wendy was not exactly keen on the idea of wandering around town looking like half the city's most wanted list while random edifices exploded around her. But she couldn't count on staying here too long before someone wanted something more of her than bravado and a strong elbow.

"I know exactly where I need to be right now," Wendy said, with more cockiness than James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Bruce Campbell combined. "Do you?"

No one challenged her after that as she strode off – with great purpose, and great speed – in the direction that seemed least occupied.

Soon she was out of sight of anyone and ducking around, looking for something that seemed familiar. She was at least out in the open, or close enough to it. In the few seconds that transdimensional travel had lasted, she'd thought of a hundred places that would be bad to Quantum Leap into – a locked room, a basement, a concert hall in front of hundreds of people, in bed with someone, in bed with multiple someones, in a dentist chair. But she'd been lucky enough to pop up in the middle of a street, not under any too watchful eyes, although the explosion was unfortunate…

Was it, though? Or had Lacey's people blown something up to give her enough chaos to slip away?

That thought rattled her enough that she almost didn't recognize the storefront, Queen Gwen's, that had been opposite the Middlequarters the last time she'd come through this Gender-Neutral-Hypothetical-Higher-Power forsaken world.

She turned. Sure enough, there's was Jolly Fat's, both the same and totally different from how it should be.

"Do you know what your Middletrainee is up to?" Wendy muttered, looking at the fixed grin on the mascot's face.

Well, this Middleman wasn't going to hear from her. Un-Lacey had kept up her end of the bargain and returned Lacey to the relative safety of an illegal sublet occupied by a world-destroying megalomaniac and an overly cozy outer space android. Now it was Wendy's turn.

-

**The geographical center of town. Dark-thirty o'clock.**

"You sure like to make an entrance," Wendy said when Un-Lacey finally showed up. "You know how long I've been waiting?"

"I can guess," Un-Lacey said. "It took a while for my people to find me and tell me that you'd given them the slip. And then I wasn't sure you'd really come."

"You know me better than that," Wendy said.

"I used to think I did," Un-Lacey said.

The air blew past. It had gotten no darker, no lighter since Wendy had come through, but it had gotten colder, and she supposed night must be falling.

"You keep saying you have these 'people' working for you," Wendy commented. "And yet I couldn't help but notice that I was welcomed by a distinct lack of a welcoming committee."

Un-Lacey sighed. "Sorry about that," she said. "I didn't know that the Union was going to be planning an attack."

"What good is an attack that the enemy knows is planned?" Wendy asked.

"That would be some Sun Tzu wisdom right there except that the Union isn't supposed to be the enemy," Un-Lacey said in disgust, and pulled her beret off her head. Her dyed black hair toppled free and she tossed the hat to Wendy.

Wendy turned it over and found crude embroidery along the cap that read MU.

"MU, supposedly stands for Metropolitan Union, but everyone calls it the Middle Union. Your little escapades here toppled Fatboy. Once people knew what had happened to Manservant Neville...and Wendy didn't help things much. She ordered huge crackdowns, got a lot of the Fatboy loyals snapping at each other or outright turned them away. Pretty soon everyone had their own little 'corporation' that existed to kick the snot out of anyone else and take whatever they had."

"Even the Middleman?" Wendy couldn't help but sound disappointed. He'd seemed like he was finally _getting_ it, was finally becoming her Middleman.

Un-Lacey sighed and didn't answer right away. "It didn't start out so bad," she said. "And I still think – if you had to have someone in charge, you'd rather it was him than _her_ , don't you think?"

"I'd rather it was him than me," Wendy said.

"I guess a lot of people felt that way, because now it's pretty much down to the two gangs," Un-Lacey said, taking her hat back and resettling it on her head. "MU and the Watson Alliance. And they're not going to stop fighting until one of the leaders has the other one's head on a stick."

Wendy shuddered. "If I had to live out Game of Thrones, couldn't it be the part with the dragons?" she asked Gender-Neutral-Hypothetical-Higher-Power.

"Game of Thrones?" Un-Lacey asked, puzzled. "You mean the children's book by Georgie Martin?"

"Brain bleach," Wendy said. "There is not enough of it in any universe."

"So now you get why I need you," Un-Lacey said.

"Why's that?"

"Duh," Un-Lacey said, rolling her eyes and looking for all the world like she was sitting in a sunbathed window seat, gluten-free pancakes cooking in the next room. "My Middleman and Wendy can't solve this, so I need you to do it."

"You...need me to get my head chopped off? Un-Lacey, there are some things even mirror incarnations of best friends can't ask for."

"That's not what I meant."

"You want me to chop your Middleman's head off?"

"Don't tempt me," Un-Lacey muttered.

"Then I'm fresh out of ideas, because it _sounds_ like you want me to help forge ever-lasting peace between two bloodthirsty armies based solely on my having the appearance and not, may I stress, the mind or memories or strategic plots of the leader of one of the gangs."

Un-Lacey brightened. "See, I knew you'd get there."

"How exactly am I supposed to do any of that?"

"Relax," Un-Lacey said. "You storm around blustering like a big bad, maybe throw in a monologue – I assume you know how to monologue?"

Wendy shrugged. "I mean, I've never done it _myself_ , but I've heard it done a bit."

Un-Lacey crossed her arms.

"Okay, okay, so sometimes it's fun to monologue in the shower a bit. Geez, you aren't going to villain-shame me, are you?"

"I wouldn't dream of it," Un-Lacey said, pure innocence. "You come to the Middleman with an truce offer, hash out the details – you can't just cave to anything he wants or your army will smell something's wrong, even if they don't guess that you're a replacement brought in from a parallel universe – "

" – How could they miss something so _obvious_ – "

" – So it's up to you to settle the matter well enough that your army will continue to side with us even after you've gone back to your world."

"So you are planning on letting me go home."

"Of course, Dubdub. Why wouldn't I?"

"Don't blink those luscious eyelashes at me, Lacey, I'm the one who taught you that trick." Wendy rubbed at her forehead. "Or I'm not. This is giving me a headache already. I don't suppose there's anywhere in this evil universe a girl could get a shot of espresso and a chocolate chip cookie?"

"Sorry," Un-Lacey said. "That's a strictly controlled substance."

Wendy's jaw dropped. "Caffeine?"

"Chocolate."

Wendy moaned.

"Look on the bright side," Un-Lacey said. "Evil Wendy has a hold on all the supply chains in the city. So once you convince people that you are her, you can take the edge off. And if maybe you smuggle some to a well-meaning citizen who fetched you here in the first place..."

"Hey, don't go changing the subject from that," Wendy said. "How can you let me back home if that's going to bring evil Wendy right back here? How long do you think this truce will last if one of the two most powerful people in the city starts howling about kidnapping and imposters?"

Un-Lacey raised an eyebrow. "You telling me you don't have any ways of dealing with inconvenient people in your universe?" 

"As long as you're sure that my going home won't just ruin everything," Wendy said. "Because I _am_ going home, and if that undoes my efforts here, I'd just as soon not put forth the efforts and catch an earlier flight back to Kansas."

"All premature air travel is strictly unnecessary," Un-Lacey said firmly. "This is going to work."

"Great," Wendy said.

Un-Lacey nodded. "First you just have to get through the Wall of Death."

"You're making it very hard for me to trust you," Wendy said.

-

**The Wall of Death. Dark and ominous. You were expecting something cheery? For the Wall of Death?**

"Nice to see the old classics never die," Wendy muttered as she and Un-Lacey approached the twenty-foot tall wall covered in spikes with an honest-to-Gender-Neutral-Hypothetical-Higher-Power piranha-infested moat and drawbridge.

"Sh!" Un-Lacey said, twirling her dark hair around her fingers in a way that was both very familiar and very alien. Lacey would renounce herself if she could see the dye in her counterpart's hair.

According to Un-Lacey, the main worry in this plan was that Evil Wendy would be behind this wall and in her army's stronghold when the changeover happened, and Wendy would be unable to escape and reconnect with Un-Lacey.

"So I had a few friends lure you – other you – out into the city first," Un-Lacey had said. "There's no way you'd have gotten out of that wall on your own."

"But breaking _in_ through the wall all by myself, oh, that should be a piece of cake," Wendy grumbled, but to herself this time.

"But you won't _need_ to break in," herself told her, borrowing Un-Lacey's voice for a moment. "You can just waltz right in."

"And if I get torn apart for impersonating the Great Leader?" Wendy silently asked her Un-Lacey-self.

"Trust me, it's better than what'd happen if you tried to sneak over the wall. Ask me what would happen. Go on."

"I'm not going to ask you. You're me. You don't know."

"Ask me."

"Fine, what would happen if I tried to sneak over the wall?"

"You don't want to know," her mind told her, quite pleased with itself.

"Halt!" someone yelled down from the top of the wall. "Who goes there?"

"Geez, does evil me really have such tacky, fantasy genre glamorizing the Middle Ages tastes?" Wendy asked herself before crossing her arms in the body language of disappointed schoolteachers everywhere.

"Yes," Un-Lacey rolled her eyes.

"Stop with the sarcasm, you're supposed to be my prisoner."

"Well, act more like a captor, then."

"Use your eyes, you brainless sack of [BLEEP]," Wendy called up to the man on guard. "Or do I need to remove you from my wall?"

Un-Lacey nodded her head thoughtfully. "Nicely done, captor."

She'd spent the walk here remembering how other Wendy had sounded talking to her and Un-Lacey and her bodyguards. Too disdainful to be angry. She didn't get mad at people because she saw them as lacking the capacity to understand her anger. Wendy was trying to channel that, but really, she always had a punch first and curse later approach to bad guys that annoyed her.

She must have gotten the tone right, because the guy started gibbering at her. She could almost see the sweat dripping off his face from twenty feet below.

"Great Leader!" he gushed. "You shouldn't be out in the city – the Union could be anywhere..."

"Then I suggest you open the gate." Wendy's voice dripped poison. "Before I decide that you're trying to leave me out in the open for a reason. Do I want to know what that reason is?"

"No – Great Leader – I mean, there is no reason – "

"You're keeping me waiting for _fun_ , then?"

"No! Opening the drawbridge, right away."

There was an almighty screeching and clanking to back up the guard's claims, and Wendy stood, feigning boredom, as the gate – disappeared?

The gate blocking the entrance simply blinked out of existence, and Wendy felt a nasty pinching in her gut as the drawbridge went with it. There was nothing covering the moat.

"All clear, Great Leader," the guy called down.

"What now?" Wendy whispered to Un-Lacey.

"You've got me," was the extremely helpful reply she got.

There was nothing she could see, anyway. But maybe this was a trick or a test? The real evil Wendy would know how to get through the Wall of Death. There must have been some password she didn't say, and now she was going to get lured into the moat to get eaten by piranhas.

Well, like all Middletrainees, she had a discrete bottle of piranha repellent on her at all times, just in case, but falling down into the moat wouldn't be a tactical move in any case.

"Great Leader?" the guy asked.

On the other hand, there had to be a way to enter the stronghold, and this guy seemed to be buying her ruse. He sounded much too scared to even contemplate leadericide.

Wendy walked toward the moat nonchalantly, pulling Un-Lacey a few steps behind her, getting closer and closer toward the edge, and eventually setting her foot out into open air, which was mercifully solid underneath her.

She didn't hesitate or slow down at all, least the guard watching wonder why the Great Leader was afraid of falling through a walkway she presumably used every day. Nor was she crazy about the idea of him asking questions, so she kept going through the gate without slowing down.

The stronghold was laid out with military precision - another sign that all Wendy Watsons are _not_ created equal, or at least that this one had gotten warped unrecognizably from the factory model. No proper Wendy outpost should have identical rectangular buildings in long rows, pointing straight toward headquarters.

Grizzled people in uniforms sprang to attention whenever Wendy walked past, though mercifully none tried to talk to her, or even to get too close of a look until she reached the front door of the biggest, nastiest building on the block. There were bars on all the ground floor windows and guns in all the higher windows, and the most grotesque gargoyles Wendy had ever seen perched on the roof. She had a strong suspicion that evil Wendy had designed them, and felt a little twinge of artistic jealousy. They were just so _appallingly_ ugly.

"Great Leader!" two brawny women at the door said, snapping to attention but, Wendy noticed, keeping their hands on their weapons. "We heard you just came in from the wall, alone. What happened to your security detail?"

"There was an explosion," Wendy said calmly, like she saw such things every day, which she did. She also didn't stop walking as she talked, so that the guards had to step aside and open the doors for her or risk letting their Leader bang her nose on her doorstop. "It seems they lost their heads. I want all of them off security when they come back. Perhaps we need to find them something less _challenging_ to do."

"Of course, Great Leader," one of the guards said. There were more people scurrying around inside headquarters, who stopped and looked at her before flying into utterly silent panic.

Wendy had to hand it to evil Wendy, there was a certain amount of flair to the headquarters, even if it was all straight from Fascist Home and Garden. There was also a minimum of ways they could go – just one long corridor stretching out in front of them – that helped immensely with Wendy's pretending she knew where she was going.

"Immediately, Great Leader," another featureless guard swooped down to say. "Does your – prisoner – need tending to?"

"Do you recognize who this is?" Wendy asked, giving Un-Lacey's arm a good shake that, from the reproachful look in her eyes, was harder than it had to be. Whoops. Still, she'd rather oversell it than undersell it. She'd been afraid about the whole Chewbacca on the Death Star act being obvious from the second they approached the Wall of Death, though Lacey had wrinkled her nose and said "Star Wars? That obscure box office bomb from the seventies that ruined Alec Guinness's career?" so perhaps she needn't have worried so much.

"Yes, Great Leader," someone said. "That's – that's the Middlegirl."

"Ugh, I have a _name_ you know," Un-Lacey said. "And I'm an adult woman. Doesn't anyone think Middle _girl_ is more than medium-sized condescending?"

"We are all dying to hear what you have to say, Middlegirl," Wendy said, baring her teeth. "Why don't you tell us everything about the Middle Union while you're at it?"

Un-Lacey hmphed and turned aside.

Wendy ran a finger under her chin and turned her face back. "Let's see how long you stick to that attitude after we've gotten a chance to – chat, for a while." Now she turned to her guards. "I need a private room. No interruptions, no surveillance. Understand?"

"Of course," and they were immediately ushered into a small, windowless room, where Wendy and Un-Lacey were successful in waiting until the door had shut before they burst out laughing.

"What on earth was that, Dubdub?" Un-Lacey giggled. "Did I accidentally swap you back for your worser half?"

"I just...got into it," Wendy said. "How can you be around this much gloomy architecture and black-on-black pattern uniforms without embracing your inner villain, just a bit?"

"I didn't think I could keep a straight face!" Un-Lacey protested. "You're good. This is going to work even better than I thought."

Wendy felt her glee subsiding a little with the reminder of the work they still had to do. "All right, now that we're here, how are we supposed to get to the Middleman?"

"Easy," Un-Lacey said. "You tell your people that the Middleman will negotiate a truce to get me back. We take off for neutral ground with a couple bodyguards – "

" – ugh, do we have to?" Wendy asked. "They give me the creeps."

"They're our cover," Un-Lacey said. "No one would believe that the Great Leader would meet her arch-nemesis without protection."

"Fine," she conceded. "We make some demands, the Middleman makes some demands, I haggle enough to make it look convincing, then we usher in a new era of My Little Pony inspired friendship and peace, right?"

"Minus the frolicking and the unnaturally colored horsehair."

"You're one to talk," Wendy said, which set them off snorting again. It was nice to relieve the tension. Wendy had forgotten how tired she'd been after work, and there hadn't been a chance to feel tired since then. But now she was finding her eyes slipping shut again.

"You falling asleep on me, Dubdub?" Un-Lacey asked.

"No," Wendy yawned.

"Catch a little shut eye," she said. "No one's going to interrupt us, they're too scared you'll gut them if they piss you off. And then you can say that you spent all this time breaking me down for information. It would do terrible things to my street cred if word got around that I'd given you the location of Middlequarters in just a few minutes."

"Well I wouldn't want to – hurt your – cred – " Wendy sounded more like a yodeling yeti than an evil overlord of a Middletrainee.

"Night, Dubster," was the last thing she heard.

-

**Evil Alliance Headquarters. I was just going to shut my eyes for a minute, I swear.**

Wendy woke up to Un-Lacey shaking her shoulder and saying, "Come on, we're going to be late," and she very nearly rolled over and told Lacey that she'd make it up for her by going to the _next_ middle of the night social justice poetry slam.

"Late?" Wendy struggled to sit back up. "We haven't even made arrangements yet, how can we be late?"

"I don't know," Un-Lacey said, gnawing on her lip. "But I'm hearing a lot of marching going on out there. It sounds like your troops are gearing up for something big. A peace offering is not going to be very impressive if it comes right after a huge military maneuver."

"All right," Wendy said, standing up right and trying to tug her clothes into an appropriately intimidating arrangement. They still felt like grungy pajamas. "I don't have lines on my face from the imprint of sleeping heavily on rumpled cloth, do I?"

"No, no, not at all," Un-Lacey said in a thoroughly unconvincing manner.

"Some sidekick you are," Wendy said, and left Un-Lacey sputtering as she threw the door open and emerged back into headquarters.

It certainly did seem like something major was brewing. There were easily three times as many indistinguishable soldiers marching around as before, and from the windows Wendy could see that more were amassing outside.

"What do you all think you're doing?" Wendy asked the nearest group. They snapped to attention.

"Preparing for a counterattack, Great Leader," three of them said all together, and okay, _that_ wasn't creepy at all. Fortunately just one continued. "Once the Middleman learns that we have his sidekick – "

"Second in command," Un-Lacey corrected, indignant.

" – he's sure to try and get her back. We have to be ready."

"We're going to be ready," Wendy said. "Because we're going to tell him that she's here."

"Gr-great Leader?" Finally, some of that soldier polish wore thin, and Wendy saw a human who was just plain confused.

"I need four _volunteers_ – " four very reluctant looking hands shot up. "Wonderful. Our very...helpful...visitor is going to tell you how to get a message to the Middleman." Un-Lacey started quietly giving the soldiers directions. "Another four volunteers will be coming with us." As Wendy had been addressing a group of eight soldiers, it didn't take a champion chess-playing computer to figure out who got to keep their Great Leader company.

"Where are we going?" one of the soldiers was apparently depressed enough to ask. 

"We're going to win," Wendy said.

-

**Winning.**

"I wouldn't have thought that the Middleman would take so long to show up," Wendy muttered to Un-Lacey. They'd been standing out in the middle of town far too long given the cheapness of the fabric with which her clothes were made. She vowed that if she were ever a hardass dictator in a Mad Maxian wasteland presiding over half the troops in the city in the battle to kill the other half of the troops, she would clothe them in wool. Maybe a nice cotton blend of some sort. Not this polyester-crap.

"He'll show," Un-Lacey said.

"Are you sure? Cause it seems like things are a little...strained with you two. Not that I'm judging," Wendy added hastily, raising her hands. Fortunately her guards didn't have to wonder why their imposing general was backing up in fear from a captive, as they were all watching the perimeter. "Or offering relationship advice, because hello, glass houses, thy name is Tommy Tam."

"We're fine." Un-Lacey shrugged. "Just, you know, everyone goes through a savior-complex induced world domination phase, right?"

"I cannot confirm or deny that statement except to say, _huh_?"

"Look, the Middle Union started as a good thing," Un-Lacey said. "But we've been having some disagreements about the direction it should head in."

"Such as?"

"Well, I think we should focus on improving our city and the quality of life for the people in the union."

"And the Middleman?"

"Thinks that we need to exterminate everyone in the city who disagrees with him first to ensure our safety."

"O-kay, that's a pretty big personality shift to spring on me in the eleventh hour!"

"What?" Un-Lacey said. "I told you we had to be careful about involving him. Besides, it's not – it's not him, really. Everyone's just a little crazy these days. People do strange things when the environment turns on them."

"Is this going to be a general eco-lecture, or something more important?"

"All eco-lectures are important!"

"More specific to the problem at hand."

"Oh. Specific. It's the sun."

Wendy looked up at the dark sky that had exhibited the exact same lack of luminosity the whole time she'd been in this universe. "Yeah, what's with that? I mean, you're either having the world's longest eclipse or the world's fastest most total air pollution problem."

"Right, of course you wouldn't know," Un-Lacey said, and resettled her beret on her head. "You turned it off."

"I what?"

"Evil you, I mean. She blocked out the sun. So that we'd have to rely on the power she's generating in secret, underground."

"That's horrible!"

"I know! It's _all_ coal-based."

"I meant the blatant Simpsons rip-off! Mr. Burns pulled that trick, like, decades ago. I'd like to think Evil Me was more creative than that."

"Creative or not, it worked," Un-Lacey said, gloomy as the sky overhead. "Not only did she pull a bunch of outliers into her army, but it's playing tricks on people's minds. Even the noblest people have started getting a little cracked."

"How come it isn't getting to you?" Wendy asked.

Un-Lacey raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think it hasn't?"

"Oh, that's not reassuring," Wendy said, but what happened next was even less reassuring.

There was an almighty roaring of engines and a great crashing sound, and suddenly all Wendy could see was the huge hurtling mass that was flying straight for her.

She ducked, rolled, changed direction, and kept on rolling, because from the sound of it, whatever was out there had overshot her but turned right back around and come back.

She got back on her feet, desperate to see what exactly was coming for her, but there were two bright shining lights pointed directly in her face and between that and the dark, her eyes were more than useless. So she shut them tight, waited until from the sound of it the thing was almost on top of her, and leapt over the lights.

She didn't totally clear the object. In fact, she collided face first with something that squished a bit, let out a "urmph" sound, and smelled of leather and secrets.

"Middleman?" she asked. The daze was starting to clear from her eyes, and she could just make out that eye patch on a face that was very not happy to see her, especially not from two inches away.

"Watson," the Un-Middleman growled, and tried to throw her off his preposterously over-sized motorcycle.

Wendy held fast, though, and the Un-Middleman didn't seem to be expecting that, or the expert way she shifted and popped him out of his seat, because pretty soon they were both flying over the handlebars.

Wendy's bodyguards belatedly sprang into action and heroically shot the now-harmless motorcycle until it was riddled with holes.

"Interrobike!" Un-Lacey said, hands over her mouth like she'd lost a friend.

"Interrobike?" Wendy asked.

"He used parts from Interrodroid 8000 to beef up his new motorcycle," Un-Lacey explained. "Poor little guy didn't even last a week."

"Eh, you get used to that," Wendy waved her hand. They'd gone through so many Interrodroids they'd started renumbering them at 1000 again. Twice. They were now up to Interrodroid 5000-3 in a sequence of robots that made _Rambo_ and _Final Fantasy's_ titling conventions look perfectly sensible.

"Don't worry," the Un-Middleman said, pulling out a flareon ray and pointing it directly at Wendy. "You'll be heading off to meet him soon enough."

"I don't know that there's any recognized theology where robots and humans go to the same afterlife," Wendy said, raising her hands to show she was unarmed.

"Just one more casual injustice by people who ought to know better," Un-Lacey sniffed.

"I mean, they kind of have a point?" Wendy asked her. "If robots and humans aren't coming from the same place..."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I have a gun pointed at you," the Un-Middleman said.

"Oh, I know," Wendy told him. "But you aren't going to use it."

"What makes you so sure?"

"One, my guards are all pointing their own weapons at you," Wendy said, not looking but hoping that was true. Surely they couldn't be so useless as not to know to engage in a standoff when they saw one brewing. "Two, flareon rays are notoriously a pain – literally – for the person who fires them, and you aren't wearing gloves." Though she wasn't sure that would stop him, what with the whole 'uber-macho' image he had going, it was always good to show off a little unexpected knowledge. "And three." She lowered her arms back down and unconcernedly crossed them over her chest. "You need me."

"Need you?" The Un-Middleman spat on the ground, which, ew, speaking of hygiene. "Lady, I need you like I need to lose another eye."

"If you kill me now, my people will swarm your people," Wendy told him, like she was commenting on the weather, which must be an extraordinarily mundane topic of conversation now that the sun was gone. "Maybe your people can beat mine. Maybe not. Who can say?"

The Un-Middleman looked uneasy at her train of thought but didn't bite just yet.

"But I can say that your people will suffer. And as long as there is one Alliance member left, they'll be coming for you."

"I can take them."

"But it's awfully hard to look out for your people if you have to be constantly looking over your shoulder. Not sure who's coming for you. Not sure if anyone is."

"You got a point anywhere, Watson?"

"We've fought each other into a standstill." Wendy inspected one of her nails. It had gotten split at some point in the last few hours of scrambling and dodging. "At this point fighting each other is just going to be...banging our head into walls."

"Is this you telling me you're going to leave town?"

Wendy laughed the laugh of an evil villain who has just had the good guy step into a trap. It was surprisingly cathartic and bit of a core workout. "No, you idiot, this is me telling you that I've figured out a better way."

She and Un-Lacey had talked over this next part. It was important not to seem like she was caving or weak at all, because the Un-Middleman would either sense something was wrong or he would call off negotiations and try to attack.

"I'm not leaving," Un-Middleman said. "You're not leaving. Seems all we can do is run into each other."

"God, look at the overgrown monkey trying to think," Wendy snorted. "Didn't you ever go to kindergarten? We can _share_."

"You and me, share this city?" the Un-Middleman actually put his flareon ray away at that. "Didn't know you were that desperate, Watson. But thanks for the tip."

"Oh, well, if you're not interested in talking," Wendy said, feigning boredom again. "I guess I'll just have to go crush your pathetic little Omega force."

That got his attention again. "Omega force?" He gave a little half laugh. "What's she talking about, Lacey?"

Un-Lacey looked more than a little annoyed that he was only now acknowledging her. "You don't need to play stupid, Middleman. She knows."

"You tell her?"

"She already knew," Un-Lacey snapped, lying. She hadn't wanted to betray her Middleman by saying what Omega force was, but had promised that Wendy's knowing the name would be sufficient to catch his attention. "Someone's been telling her things."

"What can I say? I have a lot of friends," Wendy vamped. God, this villain stuff was _amazing_. "A lot of friends who would love to see your little army stomped to bits."

"Is that why you grabbed Lacey? So you could threaten me?"

"Grabbed her? I found her wandering around and thought I'd return her. As a sign of good faith."

"There's no good faith here," the Un-Middleman said. "There's nothing good about you at all. Maybe you got more spies than I gave you credit for. But maybe you're not giving me and my people enough credit for fighting back."

"For crying out loud, you idiot," Un-Lacey stomped up to him. "All she wants is for the endless fighting to stop. Can't you see? You're just going to get us pulled further and further away from an end to this conflict!"

"Funny words from the girl who told me to start an army in the first place."

Wendy's eyes bugged out despite themselves. "Lacey!" she chided her peace-loving best friend, or what she had previously thought was close enough to her peace-loving best friend for jazz.

"It was a good idea at the time," Un-Lacey protested. "I think. Early on, when it was just countless thugs roaming the streets, no order, everyone stealing every last thing they could from Fatboy and using it to knock other people around...yeah, I thought it would be a good idea if there was a little order. But this has gone too far," she yelled back at the Un-Middleman. "MU and the Alliance are going to destroy this city if you two boneheads don't agree to settle this. Well, you're going to agree or I'm going to make you agree!"

Wendy and the Un-Middleman looked at each other with the first tentative steps of sympathy.

"I feel like I just got chewed out by a very stern elementary school teacher," Wendy said, before she remembered her evil persona. "But I suppose she has a point." She held out a hand, limply, and smiled as fake as she could. "Friends?"

"I'm not touching that hand," the Un-Middleman said. "You want me to think that you can live here peacefully?" He waited for an answer, but Wendy wasn't going to respond until she knew where he was going. "Turn the sun back on."

"Oh, sure, glad you didn't ask for anything _impossible_ ," Wendy didn't say. Instead she yawned, hoping in a completely unreasonable way Un-Lacey would know how to accomplish that.

"Why do you think that she picked this spot for a meeting?" Un-Lacey told her Middleman. " _Everyone_ knows that the sun mechanism is right here."

"Why is my populace-dispiriting ecosystem-destroying super-machine on display for any jackass who happens to walk by?" Wendy whispered furiously when Un-Lacey wandered close enough.

"Some kind of power trip," Un-Lacey responded. "For a few months after it was activated, people would come by and try to shut it off. But no one could do it. Reminds everyone that they need you."

"I'm really the most charming dictator, aren't I?"

"I bet they'd have voted you that in high school if yearbooks ever had a sick enough sense of humor."

Un-Lacey nudged Wendy toward what she'd thought had been an incongruous phone booth but was, apparently, an incongruous populace-dispiriting ecosystem-destroying super-machine.

How would Evil Wendy have hooked this up to work? Something stylish and practical and straightforward, probably. Or something that would brutally murder anyone who thought they could try such a thing.

Wendy picked up the phone receiver.

Un-Lacey flinched a teeny bit, but so far nothing had gone wrong.

Wendy put the receiver up to her ear. God, when was the last time she'd had to do that? With a real phone? With a cord and everything?

"Hello, Wendy," her own voice purred in her ear. "DNA recognized and vital signs are a go, so either it's time to release our hold on the heavens, or someone has put you up to this."

"Oh, cut the theatrics," Wendy told the recording. "Let's just turn this off so I can get on with my day."

"Voice patterns recognized. No signs off distress."

A dial pad emerged, its keys flashing far brighter than they should have given the general grimy state of absolutely everything else Wendy had seen today.

"Of course, you remember the code, don't you?" the voice over the phone mocked. Had Wendy known someone close-enough-to-her-to-fool-the-sensors-but-not-her would try to pull this off? Or had she recorded this planning on mocking herself?

Her fingers went up to the keypad but hovered an inch away. Evil Wendy had used a date that they'd both known as a code before. It was possible she'd picked another code that had personal significance. Their mother's birthday? The day they'd gotten into art school? Or something more sinister? The day she'd killed Tyler? No, that hadn't meant anything to Evil Wendy.

There were too many possibilities, and from the hum over the line she could guess she wouldn't get a second chance.

Evil Wendy had discovered that someone out there could guess the codes that were meaningful to her. Even if she hadn't predicted that Wendy would return. She wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

She would pick a passcode no one expected of her. One that no one could guess.

Before she could second guess herself, Wendy typed in 643353626.

That irritating voice over the phone sighed. "Project Mr. Burns is terminated." Evil Wendy sounded rueful. "Restoring uninterrupted solar projection."

"You _were_ just cribbing from the Simpsons, you hack!" Wendy said into the phone, but all she heard was a dial tone.

"Look!" Un-Lacey said, pointing up at the sky, where the fragile blush of dawn could be seen, faint at first and growing stronger and stronger by the minute.

"I guess you aren't just spinning tales, Watson," the Un-Middleman said. "Maybe it's time we had a proper chat."

"I suppose it's just about time."

-

**Deep inside the newly reunified metropolis. Well past just about time.**

"You sure you and the Middleman can handle other Watson on your own?" Wendy fussed for the hundredth time. She knew that if anyone in the world could handle a Wendy Watson it was a Lacey Thornfield. But after all the work she'd just put into both keeping up the illusion that she was the evil-goatee-sprouting version of herself _and_ into forging a peaceful alliance that would be accepted by the leaders and working folk on both sides of the fight, she hated the thought that one word from her double could ruin the whole thing.

"Don't worry," Un-Lacey said. "I'll keep a good eye on her. And soon as she pops in I'm going to let her know all about what she missed. She's not going to be in a big hurry to admit she was outsmarted by the two of us. She'll play along if it's the only way she has to save face."

"Well, I don't envy you having to put up with her, is all," Wendy said, feeling sorry for Lacey's double.

Un-Lacey looked down at the ground. "It won't be all bad," she said softly. "I'll get to have a Wendy in my life again."

Wendy grabbed her in a hug. "Ah, geez, send me back home with a big ugly crying face on, why don't you."

"Lacey!" The Un-Middleman called from somewhere out of sight. He'd been sounding more and more like himself – well, her himself – since the moment the sun came back up and Lacey helped him straighten out his priorities. If he hadn't, Wendy wouldn't have left without getting the chance to teach him how to properly treat her best friend's double. "Everything all right in there? I'm still not crazy about you spending so much time with Watson."

"Everything's fine," Un-Lacey called back. "We're just having girl talk."

"Better her than me," Un-Ida cackled. "You're not paying me nearly enough to chat with that floozy about tanning beds."

"You talk to everyone about your tanning bed," the Un-Middleman said, sounding confused. "Does that mean we're having girl talk?"

Wendy and Un-Lacey shook their heads at each other. "You should go," Un-Lacey said. "Before this place gets any weirder and I need you to sort it out again."

"Don't hesitate to drop me a line," Wendy said. "You know, just not with all the explosions and dimension hopping and lack of sunlight."

"So, no Middlebusiness?" Un-Lacey said.

"Strictly friend business," Wendy said, and they hugged one more time.

"Lacey, I need you to come talk some sense into this robot," the Un-Middleman said, sounding closer than before.

"[BLEEP], you have to go, now," Un-Lacey said, and Wendy's heart jumped in excitement at the thought of going home.

Just as Un-Lacey pushed the button, though, Wendy remembered exactly what was waiting for her...a Boss she'd kept in the dark...and Ida who wanted to be her best friend and to whom she now owed a huge favor...and a Lacey who was going to have a ton of questions and was assuredly full of righteous anger at getting snatched around between worlds without her consent.

"Should have just stayed here and become a villain," Wendy sighed, as she warped back to her own world.


End file.
